There has been some buzzing of late in the TCG community about a game
called Lightseekers, and today I'm going to be taking a look at it for
you guys.
First if all, what is Lightseekers? Lightseekers is a fantasy TCG brought to you by Tomy and playFUSION where you use attack cards to get your opponents life total to zero. It also comes with an app, a fantasy, hacknslash RPG available on most app stores.
I'll start with the app which is a great little game. It's your standard RPG; you complete quests, defeat monsters, you level up, gain new abilities, armour and weapons that you'll constantly be switching in and out as you pick up new, better things. The combat involved isn't particularly engaging as you have a handful of abilities in your quick select bar and to attack you tap on an enemy and tap on which ability you want to use. There is a mana and cooldown system, so with each ability requiring mana to use plus time to be used again you will be using all of them in a fight rather than just one you really like and none of the others, but enemies give out mana potion like crazy when you hit them so you probably wont be lacking on it.
There are two unique parts of the Lightseekers app; one is the ability to scan the cards you can buy for the TCG, which can gain you in game currency, new abilities, pets and other exciting things. it does this by scanning the cards which have things called fusion points around the border, the black nodes running around the edge. each cards fusion points will scan differently and, when scanned, will show you a 3D image of what that card unlocks for you in the app. you can then claim that card, what this means is each card has unique fusion points and once scanned and claimed cannot be claimed again by someone else.
The second are the toys you can purchase to use with the app. purchasing these toys will allow you to use them as controllers for games in the app just by holding them. they also talk, responding to in game dialogue or when they are hit or knocked down. this is made by Tomy who know how to make toys so they will be durable and well made.
All of this sounds brilliant and you will easily get twenty plus hours out of this well rounded, colourful fantasy RPG and scanning the cards to gain new items will keep you invested on another level, the best part is its absolutely free! I would urge players to get the app as its solid and good for bite size phone sessions.
Moving on to the card game part of Lightseekers, the cards are split into six orders which will all be easily recognisable by the colour of that card.
Tech - Orange
Dread - Purple
Storm - Blue
Astral - Yellow
Mountain - Red
Nature - Green
Each of these orders are made up of three elements which will indicate what cards you can play with which Hero that I'll get to later.
Tech - Time, Mechanical and Explosives
Dread - Poison, Death and Shadow
Storm - Water, Air and Lightning
Astral - Solar, Lunar and Gravity
Mountain - Earth, Fire and Crystal
Nature - Animal, Soul and Forest
There are three types of basic action in Lightseekers; attacks, defends and buffs.
You can tell what they are from their frame, if a card has swords in the top corners its an attack and if it has shields its a defend card. Buffs can have a couple of different symbols in up to four of the corners;
-if a buff card has no symbols in any corners, then its a static buff and either stays in play indefinitely, with its effect actioned from the moment its in play, or until its effect has been triggered, at which point it will be discarded to your discard pile. (Cards will specify when to discard them from play)
-if a buff card has a circular symbol in the active corner then it will be rotated at the start of your turn like normal.
-if a buff has an irregular symbol in the active corner, a symbol that has a rounded top near the arrow but a straight line at the bottom, it doesn't rotate at the start of your turn like some other buffs might, instead it rotates when its effect has been triggered.
These cards can be played at the cost of one action during your turn. attacks will resolve their effects and then are discarded to the discard pile as will defend cards. Buffs act slightly differently as they stay in play and are discarded either when their effect is triggered or, in cases like rotating cards, when they have made a full rotation or rotated to a corner with nothing in it.
If a buff has an X in the active corner, you ignore any effect that buff might have, X cannot be increased by any effects. If there isn't a number in the symbol in the active corner, the effect is actioned but doesn't require a number indication for the effect. If there is a number in the symbol in the active corner the effect is actioned and the rotation symbol in the text box is replaced by the number in the active corner.
You may notice the cards pictured above have symbols at the top corresponding to an element of a certain order, in this case Astral.
These are important for playing the next type of card, combo cards.
Combo cards have multiple symbols at the top of the card, this relates to playing them. in order to play a combo card you must take any amount of other cards from your hand with matching symbols to the ones at the top of the combo card. You then shuffle those cards back into your deck to play the combo card. you only have to match the symbols at the top of the combo card, this can be done with any amount of cards including other combo cards, so it is possible to shuffle a combo card with all matching symbols into your deck in order to play another combo card.
You also have Hero cards
Hero cards are aligned to orders and let you know what elements you can
play in your deck by the three symbols shown on them. They also have
gold rings around some of the elements, this signifies how many cards of
that element can be played in a turn which ill get to later. They indicate your starting life total by the number in the red bubble in the
bottom right hand corner.
Item cards will represent an element but don't require your Hero to have that element in order to play them. an item card in play will give you access to that elements cards essentially allowing you to mix orders and elements in your deck.
Getting started
Each Lightseekers deck must have 36 cards in it, including your hero, and five of those cards must be combo cards. You cannot have duplicates of any combo card and a maximum of three copies of any basic actions.
Players start the game with their Hero in play and set their life to the number indicated on that Hero.
To start the game the player going first draws four cards, the second player draws five, the third player draws six and so on.
On each players turn that player has two actions, the different actions to choose from are;
-Playing a basic action card
First if all, what is Lightseekers? Lightseekers is a fantasy TCG brought to you by Tomy and playFUSION where you use attack cards to get your opponents life total to zero. It also comes with an app, a fantasy, hacknslash RPG available on most app stores.
I'll start with the app which is a great little game. It's your standard RPG; you complete quests, defeat monsters, you level up, gain new abilities, armour and weapons that you'll constantly be switching in and out as you pick up new, better things. The combat involved isn't particularly engaging as you have a handful of abilities in your quick select bar and to attack you tap on an enemy and tap on which ability you want to use. There is a mana and cooldown system, so with each ability requiring mana to use plus time to be used again you will be using all of them in a fight rather than just one you really like and none of the others, but enemies give out mana potion like crazy when you hit them so you probably wont be lacking on it.
There are two unique parts of the Lightseekers app; one is the ability to scan the cards you can buy for the TCG, which can gain you in game currency, new abilities, pets and other exciting things. it does this by scanning the cards which have things called fusion points around the border, the black nodes running around the edge. each cards fusion points will scan differently and, when scanned, will show you a 3D image of what that card unlocks for you in the app. you can then claim that card, what this means is each card has unique fusion points and once scanned and claimed cannot be claimed again by someone else.
The second are the toys you can purchase to use with the app. purchasing these toys will allow you to use them as controllers for games in the app just by holding them. they also talk, responding to in game dialogue or when they are hit or knocked down. this is made by Tomy who know how to make toys so they will be durable and well made.
All of this sounds brilliant and you will easily get twenty plus hours out of this well rounded, colourful fantasy RPG and scanning the cards to gain new items will keep you invested on another level, the best part is its absolutely free! I would urge players to get the app as its solid and good for bite size phone sessions.
Moving on to the card game part of Lightseekers, the cards are split into six orders which will all be easily recognisable by the colour of that card.
Tech - Orange
Dread - Purple
Storm - Blue
Astral - Yellow
Mountain - Red
Nature - Green
Each of these orders are made up of three elements which will indicate what cards you can play with which Hero that I'll get to later.
Tech - Time, Mechanical and Explosives
Dread - Poison, Death and Shadow
Storm - Water, Air and Lightning
Astral - Solar, Lunar and Gravity
Mountain - Earth, Fire and Crystal
Nature - Animal, Soul and Forest
There are three types of basic action in Lightseekers; attacks, defends and buffs.
You can tell what they are from their frame, if a card has swords in the top corners its an attack and if it has shields its a defend card. Buffs can have a couple of different symbols in up to four of the corners;
-if a buff card has no symbols in any corners, then its a static buff and either stays in play indefinitely, with its effect actioned from the moment its in play, or until its effect has been triggered, at which point it will be discarded to your discard pile. (Cards will specify when to discard them from play)
-if a buff card has a circular symbol in the active corner then it will be rotated at the start of your turn like normal.
-if a buff has an irregular symbol in the active corner, a symbol that has a rounded top near the arrow but a straight line at the bottom, it doesn't rotate at the start of your turn like some other buffs might, instead it rotates when its effect has been triggered.
These cards can be played at the cost of one action during your turn. attacks will resolve their effects and then are discarded to the discard pile as will defend cards. Buffs act slightly differently as they stay in play and are discarded either when their effect is triggered or, in cases like rotating cards, when they have made a full rotation or rotated to a corner with nothing in it.
If a buff has an X in the active corner, you ignore any effect that buff might have, X cannot be increased by any effects. If there isn't a number in the symbol in the active corner, the effect is actioned but doesn't require a number indication for the effect. If there is a number in the symbol in the active corner the effect is actioned and the rotation symbol in the text box is replaced by the number in the active corner.
You may notice the cards pictured above have symbols at the top corresponding to an element of a certain order, in this case Astral.
These are important for playing the next type of card, combo cards.
Combo cards have multiple symbols at the top of the card, this relates to playing them. in order to play a combo card you must take any amount of other cards from your hand with matching symbols to the ones at the top of the combo card. You then shuffle those cards back into your deck to play the combo card. you only have to match the symbols at the top of the combo card, this can be done with any amount of cards including other combo cards, so it is possible to shuffle a combo card with all matching symbols into your deck in order to play another combo card.
You also have Hero cards
Item cards will represent an element but don't require your Hero to have that element in order to play them. an item card in play will give you access to that elements cards essentially allowing you to mix orders and elements in your deck.
Getting started
Each Lightseekers deck must have 36 cards in it, including your hero, and five of those cards must be combo cards. You cannot have duplicates of any combo card and a maximum of three copies of any basic actions.
Players start the game with their Hero in play and set their life to the number indicated on that Hero.
To start the game the player going first draws four cards, the second player draws five, the third player draws six and so on.
On each players turn that player has two actions, the different actions to choose from are;
-Playing a basic action card
(you can play two basic action cards in your turn one for each of your available action.)
You cannot play two cards with the same element symbol at the top in the same turn unless your hero has a gold ring around that element symbol.
You also cannot play two cards with the same name in a turn even if your hero would allow it.
-Playing a combo card
You can only play combo cards as your first action in a turn and it essentially eats up both your actions, but playing a combo card does allow you to draw a card in addition to the combos effect after you play it. To play a combo card you need to shuffle back into your deck any number of cards that make up the symbols at that top of the combo card. For example if the combo card has two lunar symbols and one solar symbol at the top, you need to shuffle any number of cards that make up the same symbols on the combo card.
-Activate an ability
Some buffs, items and Hero's will have abilities that you can spend an action to use. You do this by declaring the use of the cards ability and actioning that ability.
You can't use your Hero's ability twice in the same turn.
-Play an item
Playing an item is similar to other cards, they take up an action to play and go next to your hero enabling you access to the element represented on that item. Items help to play multi-order combo cards as well as basic action cards of the element shown on the item. Instead of shuffling a card from your hand with the symbol of another orders element needed on it, you can instead shuffle the item card back into your deck to pay for that element while still taking another card to shuffle back in for the other element(s).
You can only have two points of items in play at anyone time and the item points are indicated in the bottom left hand corner of the card, some have one point and some have two.
-Playing a turn
The first phase of the turn is called the buff phase.
At the start of each players turn, that player actions any triggers on Hero's or buff that state "at the start of your turn". They then rotate
any buffs they have in play if necessary, make sure to note any change
in increases to damage or reduce healing effects. Action any immediate
effects of any rotated buffs rotated this turn and discard any expired
buffs into the discard pile. A buff is expired when it rotates to a
point with nothing in the corner or when its done a full rotation.
Finally in this phase, action any effects on buffs that don't require rotation.
Next up is the action phase. in this phase players can play attack, defend, buff, item or combo cards. The first four types take up one action each, your combos takes up two actions.
Onto the draw phase. In this phase you draw a card if you have played a combo card this turn or if you haven't played a combo card or performed two actions this turn, you draw a card for each action you didn't perform.
Lastly the end phase. In this phase you action any effects that state "at the end of the turn" and players may need to perform an Empty Deck Check. You only perform this at the end of a players turn and only if they have no cards left in their draw deck, if this is the case that player must do one of the following;
-Put a card from their hand into their discard pile. (this doesn't count as a discarded card so it won't trigger anything.)
-Put an item or buff in play into their discard pile. (this doesn't count as removing so it won't trigger anything.)
-They repeat this process at the end of each of their turns until they have no cards in their hand or in play, at that point that player is out of the game.
A player is out of the game either when that player cannot perform any of the necessary parts of an Empty Deck Check or when a players life total is reduced to zero, the last player standing wins.
Thoughts
I think Lightseekers is a great little game, it does have its rough spots like the clarity of some of the rules, but the idea is there for a TCG with a lot of potential. Some of the gameplay might not be intuitive, like the rotation buffs, but that's a good thing for me, it gives you a sense of something new, something that hasn't utilized much in trading card games and I think its an effective mechanic in a fairly simple game. The art style appeals to a younger audience obviously but the overall gameplay is challenging for all ages as it employs thinking ahead like most card games. Only having a handful of core factors allows for more refinement and focus in the orders or effects of cards while still keeping it accessible and most of all fun. At such an early stage, its difficult to say what's to be for Lightseekers but from what I can see from forums and asking around, things seem positive and they have announced organised tournaments giving players a chance to test their skills on a grander stage for the chance to win prizes and fame. Lightseekers really shines when you combine the app and the card game, yes you can scan the cards for goodies like I said earlier, but it enhances your experience on the whole knowing about the story and lore of the world and understanding the personality of hero's you will meet, maybe even putting that into a theme of a deck.
If you are looking to get someone into card games, Lightseekers would be a great place to start because if they find that they want to move onto other card games it gives them a nice idea of things they need to look out for or pay attention to that can help them in those games.
With everything considered, the Lightseekers brand has come out swinging, hitting the digital game market, the card game market and the toy market all in one go and combining them all for maximum experience. I will be keeping my eye on Lightseekers for the foreseeable future with the hopes that it will take off as its always nice to have another TCG in the mix and like I said, the RPG is very solid and enjoyable for all players. I'll keep you guys informed about goings on with Lightseekers, but if this look has made you want to try it out, head down to your local games and hobbies store and ask them about it or check out www.lightseekers.com. In the mean time however, keep checking back to Game Changers for more gaming news and updates.
Finally in this phase, action any effects on buffs that don't require rotation.
Next up is the action phase. in this phase players can play attack, defend, buff, item or combo cards. The first four types take up one action each, your combos takes up two actions.
Onto the draw phase. In this phase you draw a card if you have played a combo card this turn or if you haven't played a combo card or performed two actions this turn, you draw a card for each action you didn't perform.
Lastly the end phase. In this phase you action any effects that state "at the end of the turn" and players may need to perform an Empty Deck Check. You only perform this at the end of a players turn and only if they have no cards left in their draw deck, if this is the case that player must do one of the following;
-Put a card from their hand into their discard pile. (this doesn't count as a discarded card so it won't trigger anything.)
-Put an item or buff in play into their discard pile. (this doesn't count as removing so it won't trigger anything.)
-They repeat this process at the end of each of their turns until they have no cards in their hand or in play, at that point that player is out of the game.
A player is out of the game either when that player cannot perform any of the necessary parts of an Empty Deck Check or when a players life total is reduced to zero, the last player standing wins.
Thoughts
I think Lightseekers is a great little game, it does have its rough spots like the clarity of some of the rules, but the idea is there for a TCG with a lot of potential. Some of the gameplay might not be intuitive, like the rotation buffs, but that's a good thing for me, it gives you a sense of something new, something that hasn't utilized much in trading card games and I think its an effective mechanic in a fairly simple game. The art style appeals to a younger audience obviously but the overall gameplay is challenging for all ages as it employs thinking ahead like most card games. Only having a handful of core factors allows for more refinement and focus in the orders or effects of cards while still keeping it accessible and most of all fun. At such an early stage, its difficult to say what's to be for Lightseekers but from what I can see from forums and asking around, things seem positive and they have announced organised tournaments giving players a chance to test their skills on a grander stage for the chance to win prizes and fame. Lightseekers really shines when you combine the app and the card game, yes you can scan the cards for goodies like I said earlier, but it enhances your experience on the whole knowing about the story and lore of the world and understanding the personality of hero's you will meet, maybe even putting that into a theme of a deck.
If you are looking to get someone into card games, Lightseekers would be a great place to start because if they find that they want to move onto other card games it gives them a nice idea of things they need to look out for or pay attention to that can help them in those games.
With everything considered, the Lightseekers brand has come out swinging, hitting the digital game market, the card game market and the toy market all in one go and combining them all for maximum experience. I will be keeping my eye on Lightseekers for the foreseeable future with the hopes that it will take off as its always nice to have another TCG in the mix and like I said, the RPG is very solid and enjoyable for all players. I'll keep you guys informed about goings on with Lightseekers, but if this look has made you want to try it out, head down to your local games and hobbies store and ask them about it or check out www.lightseekers.com. In the mean time however, keep checking back to Game Changers for more gaming news and updates.
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